Jun
21
2008
My father had a little game he made up called “Pushy Bruise.” As you might have surmised, it went like this: he’d poke a finger sharply into your injury and gleefully shout, “Pushy-bruise, pushy-BRUISE!” This is Lulu playing it with me:
And here is my latest little matched set of climbing artifacts:
Not to be outdone, my sister sent me her latest masterpiece, achieved by tumbling over a baby gate with dishes in her arms:
I’m writing to ask you to be very, very careful so that you, too, don’t become mottled and discolored. If you do, send me your picture and I’ll put it here.
Apr
20
2008
A few days ago I hiked up the Marin hill to an Obama precinct-leader’s house, where I picked up some promotional materials: “Women for Obama” bumper stickers for Lulu and her friend Esmeralda, a sign for my front yard, and a poster for the gecko’s cage. Gecka, normally complacent, got all excited about her new decoration. For a full five minutes she cruised back and forth trying to climb it. I’ve never seen her get so excited about a presidential candidate.
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Unlike Gecka and me, my sister has been actively supporting Obama since the earliest days. Yesterday she took this photo of him in southeastern Pennsylvania, where the moment of truth has almost arrived. “I shook his hand, while holding a diaper, so he might touch it for posterity. I told him, ‘it’s clean’ and he laughed…” The other photo shows her with grandson Ryan at her local Obama HQ.
Apr
10
2008
As I’ve told you, my younger daughter is minoring in animal science at college. Today in the livestock and dairy judging class, they did a unit on breeding-cattle. I asked her what she learned.
Lulu: I didn’t really learn anything new. Just changing priorities for what we want in our cows.
Ginna: How can I change my priorities for my cows if I don’t have any priorities or cows?
L: You don’t need to, because I changed my own priorities. For you.
G: What HAD your priorities been?
L: Muscle and finish (fat). That’s for market steers — the ones you wanna EAT.
G: And now?
L: With the female cattle, you want decent balance and structure and depth.
G: Why do I want a deep cow? I guess I’d want a balanced cow because I hate when they fall over. And structure is good, else they’re all floppy. Do we eat cows and bulls, both?
L: Presumably. The market steers were all guy cows though.
G: You’re, uh, studying animal science, you say?
L: I’m not using technical terms because I don’t WANNA. I would say bull, except the edible cattle we’d been looking at were fixed, so they weren’t too manly anymore.
G: Wusses.
L: Yeah.
